So we're probably a bit late in the game for this, but I think there's definitely a promising link between logic puzzles and escape rooms that could be explored a bit more. Anyhow, it's definitely interesting that a big player like Red Bull are getting involved in the whole mind sports thing, especially when they are doing cool things like organise a world championship.

And they also seem switched on enough that they are having the finals in Budapest, the home of the escape room!

Also of interest is that there is a UK team (the Average Gamerz) -- are any of these names particularly familiar to anyone?

Mark Greenhalgh
Sera Dodd
Sharon Gill
Ken Ferguson

Unfortunately Red Bull seem incapable of making a website that functions without (a) lagging massively and (b) display errors in Safari/Firefox so I can't see who is on any of the other teams apart from the US. They do have a name I recognise, Tammy McLeod, who has previously won the US Sudoku Championship.

For anyone interested, there are apparently a couple of wildcard teams, which you can qualify for by completing an online game.

Yes! I have met three of them and consider them to be thoroughly lovely people, to the point where the fourth must surely be thoroughly lovely by association at the very least. Mark runs Puzzled Pint in Manchester, and I talked both Mark and Ken (among others) into taking part in the online UK puzzle championship last year. Ken runs two blogs about escape rooms at Exit Games UK and at The Logic Escapes Me, and Mark runs one at Really Fun. Sera and Sharon don't blog because they are too busy playing the darned things; by consensus opinion, they're probably the most experienced players in the country, having played a good 200 (probably close to 300 by now) of the darn things, having escaped all of them but two.

I'm not sure how good an idea of having a public discussion forum dedicated to something as sensitive to spoilers as escapes room actually is, but I'm sure if we could somehow get a few of the escape room crowd over here we'd probably also uncover a few good puzzle solvers!